Looking for peoples interested in being involved in the Glasgow DIY festival to be held at the end of September. Either organising events, running events, or attending.
We will be putting on a range of events, from DIY music to talks on bicycle maintenance. (from gumtree)

Interested? Get in contact

A few wee ideas that popped into my head..
- diy phography/developing/processing
- diy music – spontaneous/imporvised music in groups
- diy spirituality – exploring spiritiualty/faith/celtic christianity outside the church
- diy medicine – looking at simple remedies for common things
- diy web – introductions to blogging/twitter, basic website creation

Hear our prayer…

May the road rise to meet you….. May the wind be ever at your back. ….May all your journeying be joyous. …. And until we meet again ….may God hold you…. and your bicycles….. in the palm of God’s hand.

Go in peace and safety.
Amen.

Read more here..

Every year a few little words appear in a Glasgow University stairwell, the first time I noticed it was the summer of 2005 (photo bottom right), and when I was walking around the uni a few weeks ago it noticed it back again (top photo). Here’s someone else’s story:

On the landing of the steps up to the quadrangle when I was sitting my finals someone had written ‘Hope lies’, in chalk on the wall of that dark corner. I couldn’t bear it for some reason, and when no one was around I tried to rub off the word ‘lies’. I made a hole in the cuff of my jacket trying to get it off, and yet it was still stubbornly legible.

The next time I went up, someone, infinitely more clever than me, had simply added to it. It now read ‘Hope lies in the darkest places’.

I thought it was beautiful.
(eilidh)

Quite an busy few weeks in terms of gigs .. last week we dropped into Oran Mor to catch Duke Special and Foreign Slippers (Gabrielle Fröd).
We walked in while Andy Knox finished off the last song of his supporting act, and a few minutes later were beautifully surprised by Foreign Slippers’ unique combination of an intricately handmade hat replete with bird and fast but delicate vibrato.

Duke Special was up to his usual theatrical tricks with lots of energy including a few songs based around the silent films of Hector Mann (although you’ll be hard pressed to find them in any archives, a Duke-style twist I only realised when trying to write this post!). There there were a few moments where you noticed was the final gig of the tour, but otherwise an brilliant evening with two excellent artists

currently listening to: duke special | foy vance | mumford and sons | laura marling | foreign slippers | van morrison (especially “Never Let the Spirit Die”| pedro the lion | oscar peterson | iain archer | dan lyth (although i’ve nearly had enough of all of them, i’m open to other suggestions..!)

The sub-heading of Chapter 20 of Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan is unfortunately similar to the Church of Scotland’s most recent project to engage with new forms of church.

Also.. Dan Lyth’s album is free to download on his site in exchange for your email address.. lots of luscious acoustic music to enjoy for the next wee while…

It’s interesting to watch the little trend of liturgical calendar + social media that seems to be developing. @twitturgies and @twiturgy make good use of twitter for this purpose and I think there’s plenty more creative mashups from where these came from: old/new, ancient/modern, ritual/technological In particular I’m looking forward to see what happens with the mainstream adoption of location technologies.. when hyperlinks aren’t just about screen based text links, and the connectivity and real world hyperlinking and networking heads out onto the street- pilgramage taking a digital turn.

A pint of your choice for the first person to come up with a creative ancient/future use for a QR code and implement it

Any other technologies up for liturgical grabs?

Of course, no one thinks that copyright owners are going to send lawyers after either President Obama or the Queen over this. But none of us should want a world where even our leaders–much less the rest of us–can’t figure out how copyright law operates in their daily lives.

Rembrandt: Self Portrait at the Age of 63, 1669 (oil on canvas) National Gallery, London—The subtle faint red spots on his cheeks and blotchy telangectasis under his right eye indicate rosacea

Hogarth: Marriage A-la-Mode, about 1743-1745 (oil on canvas) National Gallery, London—Syphilis, in particular gummatous sores covered by black beauty spots

Bronzino: An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, probably 1540-50 (oil on wood) National Gallery, London—Syphilis, in particular tabes dorsalis and general paralysis

Raphael: Portrait of a Young Woman (La Fornarina), 1518-1520 (oil on wood) Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome—Breast cancer and lymphoedema of the left arm

Jacques-Louis David: Various self portraits. Malignant transformation of a pleomorphic adenoma of the parotid gland with associated facial nerve palsy

except from Cook C. Diagnosis in painting. Student BMJ 2009;17:96-97

Following on from the previous post on microblogging and monasticism… discovered twitturgies today.. (ht jonny baker)

Google says its mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google often says that it believes ads are information.
What it doesn’t say, but clearly believes, is that you are information to be indexed, made accessible and useful.

[From Analysis: Google's Ad Targeting Turns Algorithms on You | Epicenter from Wired.com]